Did it expect her to answer? And if so, how? She couldn’t reply with its hand around her throat, constricting her ability to do something as simple as breathe, never mind articulating sounds into understandable words.
Behind the creature, the two figures in gas masks had grabbed Danny by the legs and were dragging him out of the room. His body was limp and she couldn’t tell if he was even still alive. Had the monster done something to him? And what about her? What were they going to do to her?
She remembered Nate in the bathroom behind her. She thought about the teeth marks that covered his body that he went to great lengths to hide unless he was with her. Maybe they were going to do just that to Danny, use him the way they had poor Nate after the pawnshop. And once they were done with him, she would be next. And there would be nothing she could do about it. Nothing. Not a goddamn thing.
No.
Hell no!
Her fingers brushed against the Glock holstered at her hip as she focused everything she had left on the ghoul in front of her. It seemed content to watch her struggling to breathe, finding some sick amusement in her pain, which it could clearly see on her face. It wasn’t as if she were trying to hide it; she couldn’t even if she wanted to.
Fuck you.
Fuck you!
The gun slid out easily—
The head!
— and she raised her arm and fired from almost point-blank range—
Shoot it in the head!
Its head seemed to twitch slightly, and the bullet vanished into the wall behind it.
No!
Before she could squeeze the trigger a second time, it casually grabbed the barrel with its other hand and twisted, and she somehow managed a scream despite its fingers wrapped impossibly tight around her throat, constricting everything from breathing to sounds. Or had she screamed at all? Was it all in her head?
It dropped her to the floor as if she were nothing, and Gaby forgot all about the fire burning in her throat because there was fresh, excruciating pain from her right wrist. She scooted back, away from the creature, cradling her hand in her lap, sure that it was broken, or if it wasn’t, then something was broken somewhere.
The second blue-eyed ghoul appeared behind the first (How the hell had it moved so fast?), and it too looked down at her as if she was barely worth its time. The mere presence of two of them in the same place, standing so close to one another, combined to give off an intense cold and heat pulse that threatened to drown her in some thick invisible ocean.
They looked down at her, blue eyes like living orbs against the darkness, but for some reason she didn’t think they were really seeing her at all. She had stopped mattering to them; they’d had their fun with her and now she had become…insignificant.
“How long until he comes?” the second one hissed.
“Not long,” the first one said. “He spies on us. The clever boy.”
“Not clever enough.”
“He’ll come for them soon.”
“Yes.”
“And when he does…”
“We’ll end him.”
“Finally…” the first one hissed, its thin lips worming their way into something that almost — almost — resembled a smile.
9
Frank
“We have him.”
He didn’t need the voice to tell him that. He had seen the black-eyed ghouls swarming on the small Texas town, waiting as the men in gas masks entered the house. He could taste the acrid smell of gunpowder on the tip of his tongue as the creatures swarmed the building only to hang back as the two blue eyes made their entry.
“But you already know, don’t you?”
He had hoped they would have made it back to the sea by now. Back to the safety of the ocean, where she waited. From Larkin to Starch and back again. It was risky, but if anyone could do it, it would be them. Danny was well trained, and Gaby had been a quick student. But Port Arthur was a nest of ghouls and collaborators, and they’d been forced to reroute.
“You saw us take him.”
The voice wasn’t Mabry’s. No, Mabry had gone silent these last few days. (Why? You know why.) It was someone else drawing him into the river of consciousness that connected the brood, showing him images in the aftermath of the assault on the house. The projection was vivid, which meant they were close, though sometimes distance could be deceptive when he was in the hive mind. They knew he would be listening and watching while hiding along the edges, always beyond their reach.
“And the girl.”
It was his fault. He had exposed them to the enemy because of what he had done outside of Larkin. He had revealed himself, but even worse, he had shown them his weaknesses. (Danny…Gaby…) He couldn’t sever those ties and didn’t want to, not if he had any hope of clinging onto what still made him who he was, and without that he might as well be one of the mindless husks that serviced Mabry’s will.
“She’s a weak one. She won’t last very long.”
They moved and prodded at the corners of his mind, always threatening to break through his defenses. But it was all a trick, a cheap mirage, because he had learned to camouflage himself from them. It had taken days, weeks, and months, with so many trials and errors and near-misses that nearly cost him everything. There were so many times when they almost had him, when one crucial mistake could have ended everything he was working toward.
“They’re both such frail things.”
If they only knew where he was now, what he was doing and had been for the last few nights. Moving in silence, sleeping in the day, drawing closer to the beginning and the end, while staying invisible. Always in the shadows. It hadn’t been easy, because the chances of being discovered increased exponentially the closer he got…
“It doesn’t take much to break them.”
Waiting. For him. A small town with a sign at the city limits reading: Gallant, Texas. They had let him see the markers, showed him the way in.
“Don’t make us wait very long.”
It was a trap. An obvious trap. Even a fool could see it, and he wasn’t a fool. He had never been one, and he wasn’t one now.
“You know how easily bored we can become.”
Danny. Gaby. He should resist and stick to the plan.
Stick to the plan!
But he couldn’t.
“Hurry,” the voice said inside his mind, “before it’s too late. They’re only human, after all.”
Danny. Gaby…
Smoke and gunpowder lingered in the air between Houston and Gallant. He recognized signs on overpasses and along the roads, and there were enough landmarks to know he was moving in the right direction.
“Mercer.”
The name reverberated inside his head, sometimes screamed out by the many consciousness — both strong and weak — that flowed through it day and night. The creatures knew the name, despised it. He was the cause of their pain, the man who brought fire from the skies and sent the armored machines into their carefully preserved towns. The man who was threatening their food supply, their future.
“Mercer!” they cried. “Mercer!”
He saw the evidence of Mercer’s victories wherever he went. Towns that once brimmed with life — many of them on the verge of bringing in new life — had been wiped out in torrents of violence. Survivors — and there were always survivors — scattered across other locations, always taking their stories of horror and blood with them.